It’s been a minute since the doors of Scarlet Magazine officially closed, but honestly, people are still catching up on The Bold Type on Hulu and Disney+. You know the vibe. It looks like your typical "girls in the big city" show. There's fashion, there's a lot of champagne, and everyone seems to live in apartments they definitely couldn't afford on a junior writer's salary. But if you look past the glossy Freeform exterior, you'll find something much gritier than Sex and the City ever dared to be.
The show followed Jane, Kat, and Sutton. Three best friends working at a fictional high-end women’s magazine in New York. It ran for five seasons, ending in 2021, and it managed to capture a very specific transitional moment in media culture.
What Most People Get Wrong About The Bold Type
A lot of critics dismissed the show early on as "feminism-lite." They saw the bright colors and the outfit montages and assumed it was just fluff. That’s a mistake. While the show certainly leaned into the "aspirational" lifestyle, it tackled issues that other network dramas were too scared to touch or too clunky to handle well.
Take Jane Sloan’s storyline. Jane, played by Katie Stevens, wasn't just a writer looking for love. She was a woman grappling with the BRCA gene mutation. The show spent seasons—not just an episode—exploring the heavy, terrifying reality of preventative double mastectomies. It didn't sugarcoat the recovery or the impact it had on her body image. It was real. It was messy.
Then you have the workplace dynamic. Usually, in these shows, the boss is a villain. Think Miranda Priestly but with less iconic coats. The Bold Type flipped that script with Jacqueline Carlyle. Melora Hardin played her with this incredible, steely grace. Instead of tearing the younger women down, she mentored them. It wasn't "girl boss" fluff; it was a depiction of healthy, demanding, yet supportive female leadership that rarely gets screen time.
The Kat Edison Evolution
Kat, played by Aisha Dee, was the social media director. Her arc was basically a crash course in modern activism. She started as someone who just wanted to run a cool Twitter account and ended up running for city council.
The show did something brave here. It allowed Kat to be wrong. A lot. She was impulsive and sometimes privileged in her approach to social justice, and the show let her face the consequences of that. Her relationship with Adena, a Muslim lesbian photographer, remains one of the most nuanced portrayals of intersectional identity on television. It wasn't just about "representation" for the sake of a checkbox; it was about the actual friction that happens when different cultures and political beliefs collide in a relationship.
Why the Fashion actually mattered (and why it didn't)
Sutton Brady's journey was the most grounded for anyone who has ever worked an entry-level job. She was the only one of the trio who actually struggled with money. While Jane was winning awards and Kat was flying across the world, Sutton was counting pennies to buy a sewing machine.
The fashion in The Bold Type was essentially a character itself. Costume designer Mandi Line used the clothes to telegraph where the characters were in their careers. Sutton’s transition from an assistant to a stylist was told through her fabrics. She went from cheap polyester blends to high-end silks as her confidence grew.
But here is the thing: the show knew the clothes were a mask. Some of the most powerful scenes happened in the "fashion closet," a sanctuary where the three leads would hide to cry, vent, or drink stolen wine. It symbolized the private reality behind the public-facing perfection of the magazine world.
Breaking the "Mean Girl" Trope
We have to talk about how this show handled competition. In most media, if two women want the same job, they sabotage each other. In The Bold Type, they usually just... talked about it.
It sounds boring on paper, but in practice, it was revolutionary. Seeing women compete fiercely for the same promotion and then go out for drinks afterward felt more like my actual life than any soap opera plot. It validated the idea that you can be ambitious without being a jerk.
The Reality of the Magazine Industry in 2026
If you watch the show now, it feels a bit like a time capsule. The "pivot to video" era, the death of print, the rise of influencer culture—it’s all there. The show accurately predicted how legacy media would struggle to stay relevant.
Scarlet wasn't just a magazine; it was a brand trying to survive an identity crisis. The show’s creator, Sarah Watson, based much of the series on the life of Joanna Coles, the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. That real-world DNA is why the office politics felt so sharp. When the magazine faced budget cuts or corporate takeovers by "Safford Publishing," it echoed the real-life consolidation we've seen with companies like Condé Nast and Hearst.
Handling the "Heavy" Stuff
The series didn't shy away from:
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- Sexual assault and the complexities of the #MeToo movement.
- Racial profiling and police bias.
- Immigration status and the threat of deportation.
- Infertility and the cost of egg freezing.
It did all of this while still being a show you could watch to relax. That’s a hard needle to thread. It managed to be "preachy" to some, but to its core audience, it felt like being heard.
Why the Ending Still Divides Fans
The fifth and final season was short. Only six episodes. Because of that, the resolutions felt a bit rushed. Jane’s decision about her future at the magazine left some people frustrated, while Kat and Sutton’s endings felt a bit more earned.
Honestly, the show probably could have gone for two more seasons. There was more to explore with the transition of digital media and how the characters would handle their 30s. But as it stands, The Bold Type remains a high-water mark for the "dramedy" genre. It proved that you can care about high fashion and high-stakes social issues at the exact same time.
How to watch and what to look for
If you're jumping into a rewatch or seeing it for the first time, pay attention to the background characters. The writers were surprisingly good at giving small arcs to the people in the office who weren't the "big three." It builds a world that feels lived-in.
- Start with Season 1, Episode 1: The pilot sets the tone perfectly.
- Watch the "Carry the Weight" episode: (Season 1, Episode 10). It is arguably the best hour of television the show ever produced. It deals with sexual assault survivors in a way that is profoundly moving and devoid of typical TV clichés.
- Listen to the soundtrack: The music supervision on this show was top-tier, featuring a lot of up-and-coming female artists who perfectly matched the energy of the scenes.
The Bold Type isn't just a show about a magazine. It’s a show about the specific kind of friendship that only happens when you’re young, broke, and trying to change the world from a cubicle in Manhattan. It’s about finding your voice when everyone else is trying to edit it.
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To get the most out of the series today, look past the "perfect" Instagram aesthetics. Focus on the conversations in the fashion closet. That's where the heart of the show lives. If you're looking for a series that validates your ambition while acknowledging how hard the world can be, this is the one to put on your list.